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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27323023">Benedicte Dominus</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/caldefrance/pseuds/caldefrance'>caldefrance</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anal Sex, Blood Drinking, Blood Play, Body Worship, Catholic Imagery, Communion | Eucharist, Community: theoldguardkinkmeme, Flash Fiction, Grooming, Hymns, Improper Use of Catholic Rituals, Loud Sex, M/M, Oral Sex, Religion, Wax Play</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 22:07:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,553</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27323023</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/caldefrance/pseuds/caldefrance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Andy had tasked Joe and Nicky with identifying new safe houses for the group. They had a knack for finding places left to ruin with plenty of space. They had planned to check out the abandoned church in Goussainville next. Nicky showed Joe the empty nave, gesturing enthusiastically like a real estate agent. Joe looked around at the vaulted space appreciatively, before giving a throaty scream so they could listen to its echoes. Joe agreed that the space would do nicely when Nicky worshipped his body on the altar tonight.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Benedicte Dominus</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This work was written as a response to a prompt posted to theoldguardkinkmeme, which you can find here:<br/>https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/4108.html?thread=1309708#cmt1309708</p><p>“Nicky offering up Joe on an altar in a church as a sacrifice of sorts.”</p><p>	•	Blood involved<br/>•	Old church with great acoustics<br/>•	Religious imagery<br/>•	Audience optional</p><p>How else do you think the team knew they could hang out in that abandoned church in Goussainville?</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Andy had tasked Joe and Nicky with identifying new safe houses for the group. They had a knack for finding places left to ruin with plenty of space. They had identified a list of safe houses scattered across Europe over the past few years—places like abandoned caves and vacant buildings—where they could store gear and lay low between missions.</p><p>Joe and Nicky planned to check out the abandoned church in Goussainville next. </p><p>Nicky had found the site listed in a church bulletin circulated among the faithful as a site closed to worshippers after its congregation died out or dispersed, joining other parishes, following the construction of the busy international airport at Roissy. The publication had also mentioned the church as a remarkable example of ecclesiastical architecture, offering awe-inspiring sights and stunning acoustics. The article boasted to its readers how the parish had preserved the building’s twelfth-century stone masonry, with vaulted ceilings, stone buttresses, and bas-relief carvings adorning the altar. The article also mentioned later renovations, including stained glass windows that depicted scenes of martyrdom and ecstasy installed in the eighteenth century. The article called upon its faithful readers for a benefactor to purchase the site for a nominal sum and fund all the necessary repairs, before the abandoned church and rectory was surrendered to the state’s cultural ministry.</p><p>Nicky wanted to purchase the site as a safehouse. Nicky thought the building’s history as a site of communal worship and burial as well as the noise pollution from the flight traffic at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle would keep passers-by away. Nicky thought the parish church could offer them sanctuary, as intended by the church fathers and labourers who erected it centuries ago. Nicky only needed to convince Joe that the building was suitable for their use.</p><p>Nicky showed Joe the empty nave, gesturing enthusiastically at the vaulted ceiling and the stonework and the stained glass windows like a real estate agent. Joe looked around at the cavernous space appreciatively, before giving a throaty scream. They listened as the sound of Joe’s voice echoed around them, amplified by naked stone walls.  Joe agreed that the space would do nicely when Nicky worshipped his body on the altar that night.</p><p>Nicky set about preparing the space where he would complete his ritual, sweeping the apse and scrubbing the stone altar clean, as he had been taught as a novice at the Abbey of San Fruttuoso. </p><p>Joe left to him to this task as he went to investigate the rectory. Joe explored the spaces where the parish priest had lived and planned his services. Joe found a sparsely-furnished kitchen and sitting room and a single bedroom, separated from each other by dark wood panelling and French doors. </p><p>Joe tested one of the kitchen taps, which groaned when he opened the faucet. Joe groaned himself when he realized that the water had been shut off and that he would need to perform his ablutions the old-fashioned way—with an ewer and basin. Joe found a door that led outside to the churchyard and searched the grounds for a well, where he could draw some water. He found a long-handled pump near the graveyard, which he figured the priest and his parishioners had  used to draw water to wash and clean the gravestones. He felt the pump groan and squeak beneath his hands as he worked the handle and pumped water into the stoneware ewer. He had to fill and toss the water he’d pumped twice before it ran clear. </p><p>Joe returned to the rectory, where he sat the ewer and basin out on the table before removing his layers of clothing. He then poured some water from the ewer into the basin. He dipped a washcloth into the cold water and rung it dry, with practised motions, before he began to wipe the dirt and sweat from his body. He shivered as he ran the wet cloth over his arms and chest, his armpits, and his groin. He felt the cold water shrink his sensitive parts and raise the hairs on his body. He then worked up a lather with a brush dipped in water and soap to spread on his body wherever he intended to remove his body hair: under his arms, on his chest, and around his cock and balls. He scraped his skin with a razor blade, once against the grain of his hair and then with it. He felt the blade excise those offensive parts of himself as it exfoliated his bared skin. He knocked the excess soap and his shaved hair from his razor into the basin. He then discarded the used water into the kitchen sink before filling the basin again with water from the ewer and used his washcloth dipped in clean water to remove the excess soap from his body. He felt the fresh water cleanse his body of any remaining impurities. He then rubbed his bare skin with a cream, delicately perfumed with rosemary and beeswax. He felt the smoothe application of the product on his hairless body made him appreciate his endowments. Joe breathed deeply, content, as he felt his body was prepared to receive his lover’s devotions.</p><p>Nicky found Joe like this when he was ready to devote his attention to him. Nicky stared openly at Joe’s nakedness, as the sight of his handsome body that was tempered by years of fighting and yet remained unchanged filled him with desire. Nicky so longed to touch Joe, to serve him and take him apart with his own hands.</p><p>“<i>Benedicte Dominus</i>,” Nicky sighed, thankful, that this man was his to adore and revere.</p><p>Joe saw that Nicky had changed, too. Joe saw he now wore a plain cassock of dark fabric tied at the waist with a belt of rope, the humble clothes of a faithful supplicant that were so similar to those he had worn as a pilgrim and soldier of the faith when they met a hundred lifetimes ago. After all that they had seen together, Joe knew that the only power that Nicky believed in was the enduring strength of their relationship. When Nicky had turned away from the Christian church, after witnessing the horrors of the crusades, Nicky had placed his faith in his lover’s hands. Joe allowed Nicky to worship him and to demonstrate his commitment to their special connection by praising and paying homage to his body, his blood, and his manhood.</p><p>“My body is ready, Nicky. Take me to your sacred place,” Joe bid him.</p><p>Nicky held out his hand to Joe then, so he could guide him to the altar he’d prepared, and Joe placed his hand in his.</p><p>When they entered the church together, they could now see the sun had set outside and the space  illuminated with dizzying patterns of light and shadow as aircraft lights passed overhead.</p><p>Nicky led Joe, the man he would treat as a relic and sacrament, through the sacristy and into the church. Nicky led Joe as an ordained minister might lead a religious procession, with slow steps, down the long aisle of the nave, across the widening junction of the crossing, where the nave and transept intersected, and into the apse at the far end of the church, where the altar lay. Nicky led Joe before the church’s stone altar, guiding him to turn and face the length of the nave. Nicky adored how the lights of aircraft passing over the church bathed his lover’s body in patterns of light and shadow. Nicky placed a chaste kiss on Joe’s lips, blessing him, as he bid him to mount the altar.</p><p>Joe shivered as his naked backside brushed the cold stone of the altar. Joe felt so exposed, as he lay on the altar, naked before his clothed lover in a drafty building once used as a place of public worship. Joe rested his head against the stone slab and stared at the vaulted ceiling of the church. Joe thought he could discern, in the lights that filtered through the tall windows, small stars painted a deep blue background like a spectacular night sky ornamenting the vaulted ceiling. Joe felt Nicky’s hands touch his exposed body, grounding him again. </p><p>Nicky began to speak, then, in English at first so the other man could follow. “The Lord said: ‘There—anoint him, for this is the one!’”</p><p>Nicky uncorked a vessel of oil, pouring some onto the fingers of his right hand and smearing the oil over the naked body before him. <i>Tantum ergo Sacramentum veneremur cernui</i>— Nicky poured oil on Joe’s shivering chest. <i>Et antiquum documentum novo cedat ritui</i>— Nicky smeared oil over Joe’s trembling pectoral muscles and shoulders. <i>Praestet fides supplementum sensuum defectui.</i> Nicky spread oil over Joe’s puckered nipples and quivering abdomen. <i>Genitori, Genitoque laus et jubilatio</i>— Nicky anointed Joe’s throbbing genitals, applying oil to his engorged member and furled testicles. <i>Salus, honor, virtus quoque sit et benedictio</i>— Nicky applied more oil to Joe’s depilated perineum. <i>Procedenti ab utroque compar sit laudatio.</i> Nicky rubbed the last of the oil on Joe’s quivering thighs. <i>Amen.</i></p><p>Joe shivered, feeling so exposed in the drafty space of the church, as he waited for Nicky to prepare the next rite in his liturgy.</p><p>Nicky then struck a match and lit two candles he’d placed on the altar, one white and the other red. Nicky watched Joe’s breathing stutter as he saw him take the red candle in his hand.</p><p>Nicky spoke solemnly, as he had when he delivered Mass. “May the light our love, rising in glory, dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds.”</p><p>Joe hissed as Nicky poured hot wax over his chest, hissing as the searing drops touched his burnished skin. <i>Victimae paschali laudes immolent fidelii.</i> Joe shuddered as he felt each drop of wax as Nicky tipped the burning candle over his chest and abdomen. <i>Mors et vita duello conflixere mirando</i>— Joe cried out as Nicky poured wax on the sensitive skin of his groin. <i>Dux vitae mortuus, regnat vivus.</i> Joe let out a howl as Nicky let drops of wax fall on his throbbing cock. <i>Scimus erus surrexisse a mortuis vere</i>— Joe screamed his voice hoarse as Nicky covered his cock and balls in wax. <i>Tu nobis, victor Rex, miserere.</i> Joe whimpered with relief when Nicky finally extinguished the candle stub against his own skin, screaming in pain an amen as he burned the heel of his open palm.</p><p>Joe shuddered, as he was reminded again how deeply and zealously his lover felt the religious passions—the same as those that had driven his actions as a crusader for the Christian church.</p><p>“Behold him who takes away the sins of the world.”</p><p>Joe shuddered again as Nicky presented him with a blade, a delicate instrument with jeweled hilt they had had forged centuries ago in Al-Andalus. Joe nodded, giving permission for Nicky to perform the next rite on his body. <i>Adoro te devote, latens deitas, quae sub his figuris vere latitas</i>— Joe hardly reacted as Nicky flayed the hardened wax from the skin of his chest and abdomen. <i>Tibi se cor meum totum subjicit, quia te contemplans totum deficit.</i> Joe felt his chest heaved as Nicky nicked the skin of his arms and chest with the ornamented blade. <i>Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur, sed auditu solo tuto creditur.</i> Joe gasped as Nicky cut deeper into the flesh of his pectorals, carving into the muscle before it could heal. <i>Credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius; Nil hoc verbo Veritátis verius.</i> Joe keened as Nicky scored his flesh.</p><p>Nicky lowered his blade when the wounds that scored Joe’s flesh were thirty-three in number. </p><p>“<i>Yusuf</i>,” Nicky whispered, invoking his true name, as he prepared to inflict a more serious wound.</p><p>Joe felt his breath catch in his throat as Nicky seized his manhood with one hand to reveal the sensitive skin beneath.</p><p>“Blessed is this man,” Nicky prayed, solemnly, “always, now and ever,” he uttered as he swiftly severed the femoral vein near the genitals and collected the blood that spilled out of the wound in a chalice, “and unto the ages of ages.”</p><p>Joe gasped for breath, as he felt the familiar shock of blood loss. Joe stared at the light filtering through stained-glass windows depicting the trials and torments of Christian martyrs, as he heard Nicky cry out and wail over his wounded body. Joe was scarcely aware when Nicky raised the bloody cup into the air and spoken consecrating words. Joe stared out at beautiful patterns of light that streamed and swirled through the open space of the church and did not see Nicky wet his lips with his consecrated blood or drink deeply from the chalice as he lost consciousness before his body could heal.</p><p>Joe recovered his wits, groaning, as he felt Nicky’s bloodied lips wrapped around his cock and remembered the Christian service involved two elements—bread and wine or, in this case, blood and seed. Joe relished the pleasurable sensations of Nicky’s mouth as he bobbed and sucked on his cock, as he alternated speaking words of devotion and demonstrating its action. <i>O sacrum convivium!</i> Joe moaned, shaking his head from side to side, as Nicky licked and lapped at his cock with his skilled tongue. <i>Recolitur memoria passionis eius</i>— Joe groaned, shuddering against the hard stone slab of the altar, as Nicky swallowed his cock to the root. <i>Mens impletur gratia</i>— Joe whined as Nicky only granted his throbbing cock irregular touches. <i>Et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur.</i> Joe howled with pleasure, overwhelmed by the force of his protracted orgasm, and released his seed into Nicky’s waiting mouth. <i>Alleluia.</i></p><p>Joe lay prone, feeling boneless and sated, against the hard surface of the stone altar. He felt exhausted even as he basked beneath his lover's devoted attentions.</p><p>Nicky felt tears rise again to his eyes as he was affected by the sight of Joe—his lover, relic, and sacrament—lying spent on the altar following a powerful orgasm at his hand. Nicky also felt his own cock stir and he divested himself of his clerical dress to mount the altar and sit astride his lover. Nicky stroked Joe’s chest and abdomen, gathering some of the oil he’d smeared there, and stroked his own cock to lengthen and stiffen. Nicky then fingered Joe’s arse until he was satisfied his perineum was oiled and stretched before sinking his oiled cock into the tight space of his anus. Nicky offered Joe mixed praises and adorations as he jerked his hips and fucked his lover at last. Nicky devoted himself to pursuing their mutual pleasure as Joe moaned and whimpered beneath him.</p><p>Their coupling made noises that echoed off the walls of the church and when they climaxed, their cries of sweet relief and satisfaction reverberated through the empty space. None but themselves heard the screams they gave as they came together.</p><p><i>Kyrie eleison!</i> Lord, have mercy! </p><p><i>Alhamdulillah!</i> Praise be to God!</p><p>No one asked how Joe and Nicky knew Charlie safehouse was a good location to use in case of an emergency when they added it to their list. The others simply trusted that they had both done their due diligence by conducting a comprehensive appraisal of the site and taken reasonable steps to assess its seclusion and its amenities.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Some of the hymns and liturgies used for less-than-holy purposes in this work include:<br/>• <i>Tantum ergo</i> (hymn excerpted from <i>Pange lingua</i>, expressing the doctrine of transubstantiation, that bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ during the celebration of the Eucharist)<br/>• Easter Vigil and <i>Victimae paschali laudes</i> (liturgical sequence)<br/>• Byzantine liturgy rite (consecration and elevation of the sacrament)<br/>• <i>Adoro te devote</i> (Eucharist hymn), and<br/>• <i>O sacrum convivium!</i> (honouring the blessed sacrament).</p><p>If you enjoyed this version of Joe and Nicky's love, please leave a comment. Your excitement gives me excitement!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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